Chapter 168 – Omniscience
The sound of a far-talking device broke the silence in the room, making Lady Night Breeze jerk up with a startle as her meditative state broke. She gazed at her watch and her eyebrows creased immediately.
She jumped up from her soft padded seat on the floor and quickly grabbed the device.
"What took you so long?" She growled into the device.
"My apologies. The far-talking devices are expensive and the ones that can connect while on the move are too much for the merchant. I could only contact them when they stopped for a camp." Said the voice from the device.
"Fucking useless idiots. Give me their coordinates, I will get there immediately." Said the woman in her usual bitter voice.
"Of course." Answered the voice from the device giving her the coordinates and she disconnected the device before he could say anything else.
"Useless…" she muttered as she grabbed a big book with wide pages and opened it. She looked at the big picture of a map taking up an entire space of two pages and turned to the next page showing another map. Every time she turned pages a new map would be pictured there.
She turned a few pages until she found what she was looking for and gazed at the small piece of paper where she wrote coordinates, comparing it with the map.
After finding the right spot on the map, she threw away the paper and walked to the hanger picking up her robe and covering herself.
After that she walked to a single spot clear of all debris filling this room in the far side of the room and stood there with her eyes closed for a few seconds, concentrating on her magic.
A wide crack in space appeared in front of her a few moments later and she stepped through it disappearing from the room.
*****
It took Noah a few minutes to finally calm down, stopping his tirade of endless swearing at Ugy.
"User, we are pointlessly losing time." Said Ugy as Noah sighed from feeling his minds exhaustion, even though he just dreamed for many hours and his mind was supposed to be resting at that moment the same as if he slept a healthy sleep.
"Alright. So how do we use this…stalker skill?" Asked Noah sitting on the bed.
"Two conditions. First, you need to enter the mind realm with your body." Said Ugy.
"Alright." Said Noah entering the house inside his mind. "What's the second condition?" He asked, looking at the plush bear sitting in the armchair.
"Second condition is that you need to release me from this plush body…." Said Ugy.
"No!" Screamed Yuko rushing into the room from behind the corner.
"Nice try. But no way. You are staying." Said Noah.
"Yes!" Hissed Yuko lifting a fist.
"This is not a lie. I really need it. My functionality in this state is limited and where we will be going, I need to be at my hundred percent." Said Ugy.
They gazed at each other for a few seconds in silence, as Yuko gazed between them her eyes skipping from one to another.
"Fine, but you get back later. I prefer you this way than an invisible voice talking into my ear." Said Noah crossing his hands.
"Make me more gorgeous." Said Ugy.
"No." Said Noah and silence spread as they both became quiet again.
"Fine." Said Ugy a few seconds later in surrender.
"So what do we do now?" Asked Noah.
"There's a bedroom in this house upstairs." Said Ugy. "Once you release me from this state I want you to go there, lay down on the bed, and activate the skill." Said Ugy.
"And Yuko, either go to the basement or sit silently. His mind needs full concentration without any disturbance." He added turning to the spider woman.
"Tsk." Voiced Yuko as she walked out of the room, going down to the basement that she occupied as her private den.
As Noah walked up the stairs to the second floor, the plush bear in the armchair went soft and fell to the side lifelessly.
As Noah lay on the bed he activated his new skill stalker and the view in his eyes changed from a white ceiling to a complete darkness.
"Concentrate on your inner mana flow just like before." Said System's voice in the darkness.
Noah started to breathe in measured breaths as he concentrated on his senses that perceived the flow of mana.
Soon the picture of the depthless ocean that flowed over his whole body reappeared in the darkness filling it entirely. But there was something strange in this ocean compared to the one he saw before.
"Do you see the difference in this scene from the one you saw before?" Asked the System voice.
"Yes. As if an additional color was poured all over the colorful ocean." Thought Noah and his words reverberated around his mind realm.
"Good. Concentrate on this additional color. Try to imagine how it would look separately from everything else." The System voice guided him.
It took Noah some time to achieve what the system asked of him, but once he succeeded he felt as the different colors dimmed and disappeared leaving only one single grey color all around him. Together with colors, the scene of his inner mana flow disappeared as well. Instead, an entirely different scene came into his view.
"What is this?" Asked Noah feeling greatly surprised by the complex and unnatural scene around him.
The world felt monochrome yet he could see it clearly as if colors simply never existed. Only the shades of one color comprised everything yet it still was absolutely clear.
What Noah saw were countless strings and lines that spread around the world like spider web yet were absolutely haphazard, having no system in their picture.
At some points, these strings came very close to each other but never touched, at other places they formed tight knots with each other before dividing into several different strings and going in different directions. Then each new string repeated the same actions with countless other similar strings, knotting and dividing. And as far as Noah could see this world of strings was endless, spreading infinitely into the distance.
As Noah gazed at these strings something pulled at his mind, attracting his attention. He turned to look at one specific knot as it somehow felt familiar to him.
"What does it feel when you gaze at the knots?" Asked the System's voice.
"I…I feel as if I know it…I feel like I've seen it. As if it happened. Like a deja-vu." Said Noah, unsure of how to describe that feeling of familiarity. Unconsciously he tried to reach out to that knot, but System's voice stopped him.
"Do not touch anything. Only feel them. Concentrate on what you wish to achieve." Said the System.
"Firria." Muttered Noah, his voice spreading in this strange world.
Suddenly he felt that one path of lines attracted his attention as if resonating with what he looked for. Noah concentrated on his feelings and his eyes went wide.
"Tessa?" He asked and his consciousness was immediately pulled away as if he flew somewhere at the speed of light and suddenly he stood at the door of her mansion that very day when they met for the first time.
He saw himself standing at the door of the mansion, colorless and motionless as if the picture was frozen.
"Why am I here?" Asked Noah, "What does it mean?"
"This is the point of your life when your path crossed with Dutchess Threadweaver. Where your fates are interconnected the strongest. A place where your two Karmas connected and made a knot of bond." Said the System voice.
"Karma?" Asked Noah surprised.
"Every string is a footprint that you leave as you travel your life path. Every knot is the place where you make choices that cross someone else's life paths." This is a world of countless consequences brought by the choice and deeds of your life." Explained the System voice.
"All consequences of my choices?" Whispered Noah in shock looking at the endless world.
"This world is endless and even if you lived for millennia you would not be able to see even one percent of all the consequences that each of your deeds has led to. It is impossible to check every footprint and we are not here for that."
"How does it help to find Firria?" Asked Noah.
"Look up." Said System and Noah lifted his head seeing that instead of sky he saw a dome-like ceiling that had many different whirlpools all over it.
"I am within the knot." Said Noah realizing what this meant. "These whirlpools are strings tied in this spot that I saw as a knot when I was outside."
"Yes. Every knot consists of strings that belong to you and other people that intersect in this knot. Try to find the one that does not belong to you. The one that feels like it belongs to Theressa." Said System.
Noah concentrated his attention on the whirlpools in the sky and after a time some of them felt to him like Tessa. It felt as if she hugged him in her embrace.
"There are several of them." Said Noah.
"This is where the most interesting part begins." Said System.
"There are always at least two strings that lead to the knot of consequences. One leads you forward in time. The other leads you back in time, allowing you to perceive what brought you or that person to this spot and what consequences occured from choices made at this spot."
"Wait, I can choose whose string to follow? I can follow Theressa's footprint instead of my own?" Asked Noah
"You are very perceptive, User. This is indeed the case. But this is not the most important part. The best part here is that some lead to the next knot, while some lead to the previous. For example, if you follow Theressa's string, all the knots that would follow forward after this moment are the ones she lived after meeting you.
However, if you try to follow the string that leads back to her previous knot, there you will see Teresa's choice before you came into her life. And you will gaze at other paths and consequences of her choices at that spot. They would lead you to her other choices. If you go even deeper you will find earlier knots, and so on and so on, allowing you to witness her entire life. All her choices, all consequences of these choices. You can know everything you want."
Noah gaped in awe of what he just heard.
"This…this gives me omniscience. I can know what I am not even supposed to know. No. What no one is supposed to know. Even if there are no witnesses to know the truth, I can know through this skill as clearly as if I saw it myself." Said Noah in shock.
"Or find something you were not supposed to know how to find." Said System. "You found this spot when you searched for Firria. This path resonated with you, meaning there is a common knot between you, Theressa, and Firria. If you find the path from here to Firria's string, you will be able to reach her present situation at the end of it. You will find her current whereabouts.
"Wait what common knot can Firria have with Theressa?" Asked Noah.
"The red-blue pills." Said System. "Somewhere out there should be a path that knots Theressa's pill recipe with the disaster of the Bullmen clan. Once you find it you will find the strings that belong to that girl Firria."
"Holy shit. With this skill, as long as I have a common knot with someone I can follow through their footprint, find everything about them, find out who they intersected with in life, and then follow those people's paths too. I can find out information about people I have never even met?" Muttered Noah analyzing what he got his hands on.
"Yes, just like a stalker. However, you should know the path to find what you are looking for. Otherwise, you would search endlessly. This time we are lucky. We have definite intersection points and know the path that would lead us to the target. To be specific the path we should search through would look like this: From you to Terrssa Threadweaver to Dark Association to Red Bull Chieftain to Firria. You are all connected through the red-blue pills. As long as you follow that lead from person to person it should lead you to Firria." Explained System.
"Fucking hell, Ugy, you telling me this is a skill of the sixth level? Did you miss a few numbers somewhere? It feels more like a hundred sixth level's skill to me. Am I breaking another worldly taboo here? Do I need to be wary of sudden divine lightnings that are going to be sent to smite me from now on? Will I get divine retribution because of it?"
"Nothing of the sort." Said System voice. "Well, at least as long as the guide stays…none functional. But you are right. There is a price of sorts. However, it is more like a condition that has to be met for such a skill creation. And we met the conditions. In other words, the price has already been paid, by someone else."
"By whom?" Asked Noah warily.
"This is a long discussion. We can continue it another time. There is a more pressing matter right now." Said system
"We are definitely discussing it later. Don't even think of swiping it under the bed and think I will not remember." Said Noah then he did as System instructed him, concentrating on the whirlpool in the sky that felt to him as the path to Tessa's past, and he was immediately pulled by an invisible force, flying at a light speed to a different place.